So I've been reading the buzz out there around Citadel's Contrast Paint range. For those of you who haven't, it's part of their painting scheme & range of products designed to produce an impressive base for minis, with minimal work.
I'm planning on doing a Filtvelt Defenders unit, which is .. orange. And orange, along with yellow, is a very hard colour to do well - it doesn't cover cleanly, it's usually very thin, etc. So using traditional techniques - not Contrast - I'd been able to get this:
To get this, I had
1) based in light grey
2) hit with black ink wash
3) drybrushed a few coats with light grey
4) drybrushed some coats of orange paint
5) Hit with a yellow wash
plus detailing, of course. It's ok - needs some improvements, I feel.
Now let's follow the Contrast Paint process. This is my first trial run, so I kept it very simple.
1) Base light grey. I used Citadel Seer Grey base, that's apparently a satin finish base which works well with contrast paints. I've seen reports that matt/chalky bases create issues.
2) Slather on the contrast paint. It's pleasingly thick, spreads well, and I just brushed off any pooling. Here's it wet, then dry
As you can see, the details all come up nicely, the colour's good and strong and even.
3) Some basic detailing - metallic parts painted black and drybrushed metal, some black contrast trim added, cockpit ... that's it.
And that, with much much less effort, is a creditable table-ready mini. I'm going to see how I can push this further. For example, I'm going to try basing black, drybrushing Seer Grey, then hitting it with contrast orange, to see if I can get darker panelling. And I'll see whether ghostbrushing with orange paint adds highlights nicely.
Short form, Citadel Contrast paints are a step past the Army Painter dips, which are basically all varnish wood stains. The colours of Contrast are stronger than traditional Army Painter dips, and available in a wide range of colours. With browns, greens, and greys, I can get similar effects from an appropriately coloured base, and then hit it with appropriate inks; this provides a milder colour upgrade, and detailing, but hasn't always worked for other colours - blues, and the aforementioned yellows & oranges. And there's issues correcting mistakes - I just painted some more contrast over some black overrun, and it didn't really do well, but we learn - next time I'll correct with grey, then put orange on top.
And then there's White Contrast. I've seen W40K minis done with that, and I think I'll prefer a darker panelling for my WoB/ComGuard units, but it's a hell of a good place to start, and I'm looking forward to picking up Contrast Yellow & Contrast Whie, as my new job is just two blocks away from a Warhammer shop chock full of Citadel paints!
Comments/questions welcome, and I'd love to hear from others who've tried this stuff.
W.